Parallel with lynchings

Troy Davis sat on death row for 22 years. Can murder get any more “premeditated” than that?

There’s a disturbing parallel between the ranking of states implementing the use of executions since 1976, with its restoration by the Supreme Court, and the ranking of states where blacks have been lynched (looking back another 94 years to 1882 – when the documentation of lynching began).

Of the 12 highest-ranking states in the application of the death penalty, nine are also numbered among the top 12 in the documented lynching of blacks, according to data compiled at deathpenaltyinfo.org and statemaster.com. The other three states are ranked at 14th, 16th and 19th.

Those 12 states ranked highest in lynching and the next nine highest form one contiguous block. That’s 21 neighboring states that have in common the lynching of 3,409 blacks, while 37 blacks were lynched in 22 states outside this block, a ratio of 92 to 1. The remaining seven states have lynched only non-blacks.

Looking back to 1861, 21 years before the beginning of recorded lynching, there’s another disturbing parallel. All 11 seceding Confederate slave states are later ranked among the 12 most prolific in lynching blacks.

Dave Vent

Spokane Valley